BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Wednesday, Sept. 5, 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

BLESSED TERESA OF CALCUTTA (b Macedonia 1910, d India 1997) - Founder, Missionaries of Charity, 1979 Nobel Peace Prize Winner
In 2010, the world marked what would have been her 100th birthday. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born to Albanian parents in Skopje, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. She joined the Loreto Sisters of Dublin as a teenager, and at age 18, she was sent to the Loreto novitiate in Darjeeling, India, where she chose the name Teresa and taught at a high-school for upper-class children. Surrounded by the overwhelming poverty of many Indians, she says she heard an inner call one day to 'follow Christ into the slums and serve him among the poorest of the poor'. She left the Loreto community, took a nursing course for several months, and got permission to start a new religious community. She chose to work in Calcutta (Kolkata) where she opened a school for poor children in a slum area, while visiting her neighbors to know their needs. Before long, volunteers joined her work, some of them former students, and became the core of her religious community founded in 1950. They carried out their work with contributions in food, clothing, supplies, and use of buildings. In 1952, the city gave her a hostel which became a home for the dying destitute. As her order expanded, services were extended to orphans, abandoned children, alcoholics, and street people. And for the next four decades, she took her mission worldwide. soliciting material support for the work of her sisters and inviting the world to see Jesus in the poorest of the poor. Her order has become global, a she herself was considered a living saint and was one of the most famous persons on the globe by the time she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She died of natural causes on Sept. 5, 1997. John Paul II, who met her several times, waived protocol and started the cause for her beatification immediately, and beatified her in October 19, 2003. She is buried in the Mother Teresa Center in Calcutta.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090512.cfm


WITH THE HOLY FATHER TODAY


General Audience - The Pope resumed his catecheses on prayer, and reflected on the theme of prayer
in the opening section of the Apocalypse.

In the afternoon, he will meet with
- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (regular meeting).


Forgive me for a line that was here all day today while I was gone, about "No events announced for the Holy Father today" right after the two events he did have today! I was rushing out this morning and did not bother to check how this post looked after I punched 'Reply', and I ought to know better than to take these things for granted. I'll try to be more careful.